


we have run around these infinite cycles all these years

by adreamaloud, daneorange (adreamaloud)



Category: Lost Girl
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:13:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/adreamaloud, https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/daneorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She goes far back. In all those years, she was beautiful. Truth be told, that was always Tamsin's problem. Tamsin, hunting, and a girl through the centuries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we have run around these infinite cycles all these years

**Author's Note:**

> a/n. spoilers until the season 3 finale. i made everything up, except for some recognizable parts (including a line or two from another show entirely), and i took many liberties with mythologies and histories, for which i apologize in advance. all errors are mine.

Some nights, Tamsin still has dreams where she is strong: Explosions at the edge of her fingertips, the smell of gunpowder and burning flesh in the air. Sometimes, when she wakes up, she still tastes the blood on her lips. These are the good ones --when she wakes, she's spent and panting, but she's grinning.

Some other nights, Tamsin dreams of a girl. Those dreams are something else entirely.

*

Tamsin remembers a lot from the heydays -- it's all she does lately: stay awake at night, staring at the stars while lying at the back of her truck, waiting for the images to come to her. She sees them play out before her eyes like it were yesterday: She's walking into a war in full swing and all she has to do is blink. Right then: Armies upon armies -- if there was anything she still remembers most vividly, it's the sound of bodies dropping to the ground one by one, then all at once.

Tamsin remembers that first time _their_ paths crossed: She goes as far back as _Carthage_ , and has managed to evade Tamsin all this time. In some centuries, she was a queen; in some, a dark-eyed warrior. In all those years, she was beautiful.

Truth be told, that was always Tamsin's problem _.  The thing with you_ , she tells herself constantly, _is that you fall in love with your targets_.  It's a funny thing -- here she was, a valkyrie at her prime, able to lay waste to hundreds of able-bodied men, only to be chasing the same reincarnated warrior princess through all the centuries.

 _There's a certain romance here that I cannot ignore,_ she thinks to herself, before adding: _I am going mad._

 _Mad._ That she was, ever since, and for as long as she can now remember.

*

And so: Riding into this new town in these new boots, she thinks, _Maybe it's time to change the battle plan._ No more longing looks from afar, thinking she'd just be able to draw the bow and shoot it, or whatever contemporary equivalent of it she had in hand.

This time: She would go in for the kill. And by in, she meant either old school stabbing or beheading, or whatever. Something to do with her hands. Something to feel.

 _Yeah, that's the plan,_ she tells herself, driving her truck into the city.

*

But then, the first time she sees Bo in this lifetime, she knows -- she _knows_ she is done for. _Bo,_ she repeats to herself, savoring the taste of it. _I even know her name this time around._

This time around, she tries all sorts of things: When the alliance she forged with one of Bo's enemies proved too pedestrian, she tried doing it the long way around and tried to gain Bo's trust instead. If there was anything in all these centuries has taught her, it's that it was easiest to betray those who had already fully given themselves over.

It takes a while  -- by now, Tamsin already knows she's running out of time, of all things, and the cards are getting far too many. _Chill now,_ she wishes to say. _We've waited for centuries -- how's a few more?_ She laughs to herself at that, but she knows no one's finding it the least bit funny. 

Somewhere along the way, she even gets a personal nudge -- and later, a literal _hand._

 _Talk about forcing mine,_ Tamsin just thinks, gripping the bottle for the druid carefully. She doesn't want to do this, but there's no running now. Seems someone has worked up a temper, and it worries her far too much than she cares to admit.

*

She takes to drinking -- of course, she does. What's a mythical reaper to do? It dulls nothing, but it makes for some interesting reactions. Once, she tries barging into Bo's bathroom and finds herself being threatened with a knife.

That Bo is naked doesn't ruffle Tamsin; she has seen this body before. The first time, she was under the moonlight, in the middle of a desert that doesn't even exist anymore. Tamsin remembers that most vividly; remembers the jolt of that feeling, that way it just took all the air from her lungs. That time, she just put her spear down and ran. Just fucking _ran_ , until her legs ached and burned.

"You know you'll have to take her out, one of these years," was what they always told her. "There's no running."

And Tamsin knows. "There's always the next lifetime," was what she always said in return.

And every time, she tries to hide a certain hope.

In this lifetime now, Bo's asking: "What are you doing, Tamsin?" And Tamsin just thinks, _Indeed. What are we doing?_ This is the closest she's ever been in eons--and the most vulnerable her target's ever been. And yet when she draws her gun, it's only to throw it away.

 _Oh, you are so, so fucked,_ she tells herself, sliding in further. "You think you've seen everything," she says instead. "And then you see _you_."

Bo just looks at her with _that_ mix of confusion and strange want that Tamsin never quite knows how to deal with. Tamsin has never mastered want, in any of her many lifetimes. _Easy now,_ she reminds herself, sliding in closer and pushing herself up against Bo's knees. "You're not supposed to be real." Bo's all too warm against her -- or is this the alcohol working under Tamsin's skin? "You're not supposed to be _here_."

She knows she's babbling. She knows Bo knows next to nothing. "Tamsin," Bo begins. And if there's anything Tamsin also knows, it's that if she stays for a fraction of a second longer, she's going to have to kiss her.

And so she does this the way she's always done it: She flees. She lifts herself out of the tub, retrieves her bottle of rum from Bo's table, and prepares to leave. 

"So. I guess I'll see you at the Dal, then," Bo says. Tamsin tries not to hear the sigh there; tries not to remember that way Bo had looked at her lips for a splitsecond; tries not to wonder, _What if._

"Keep your wits about you," is all Tamsin says instead.

When she walks out her knees are all too weak, and she knows it's got nothing to do with the rum.

*

Sign that Tamsin is so fucked, #7,960: She pushes Bo out of the way and takes the bullet instead. Sure, it wouldn't end her, but man, she needs to stop doing Bo _nice things_.

It's just not what she's here for.

*

"There used to be a time  I could settle battles with the blink of an eye," she tells Bo, trying to keep the ache out. Oh, the things she would give to be _that_ young again.

Bo looks at her, unblinking. _This battle has been settled a long time ago,_ Tamsin just thinks, looking at her; for a nanosecond there, just allowing herself _this moment._

 _Draw your sword now, Tamsin_. "My to-do list is long," she tells Bo. "And I got a druid to catch, so."

Bo walks out the door after her. Tamsin can feel as much in her veins: She wouldn’t be back here. Not for a very long time.

*

It is not the likeliest of battlefields, and certainly not one Tamsin's used to -- Tamsin's had vast fields and empty deserts and cold fortresses and huge coliseums even, and this is actually the first time she's doing a final battle of sorts in a small room. A completely anti-climactic setting, it seems, for a battle that has raged for eons. _And all that while we spent skirting each other in these infinite circles,_ she just thinks, studying Bo. _And this is all I have to end this with? Pathetic._

Bo says the word _betray,_ and promptly draws first blood. None of the succeeding blows are quite as painful.

The finishing move comes unexpectedly, but just the same, Tamsin takes what little time she has to prepare herself. Death's never been a strange thing; if anything, the stranger thing is mercy. 

"Finish it already!" she tells Bo, heaving. She knows an ending when she sees one, and this one's as good as any of the hundreds of other endings that came before. There have been lions, and falls, and arrows, and swords. _But it has never been Bo,_ she thinks, _nor any of the people who used to be her, and indeed, what a fitting ending, this._

"No," Bo says, letting her go. _Fuck this,_ Tamsin thinks. _Fuck this, and your good, good heart._ "Not this way."

When she lifts herself off Tamsin, Tamsin seizes the opportunity to put a knife to Bo's neck, trying to temper the trembling in her hands. "I am dead, you know," she tells Bo, digging in just close enough not to draw blood. _What are we waiting for? This could be so easy._

"You feel more alive to me than anyone," Bo says, and Tamsin just feels her strength leave her.

Tamsin thinks: _This battle has been settled a long time ago. This battle ended before it could even begin._ Everything comes back to her in sharp, staggered stabs: All the other moments she thought she could, only to find that she couldn't _. After all this time._

"You are not like anyone I have ever met," she says finally, and for the first time in ages, she just _lets_ herself feel _something_. "In any of my many lifetimes."

When Bo looks at her, Tamsin can't focus on a single sensation. Tamsin knows what Bo doesn't -- _we have been here before, time and again, and I remember you -- all of you. You were a queen, you were a warrior; you were a healer, you were a knight. You were perfect. Have you any idea how long I have been running after you and from you and after you again? Have you?_

 _What is this excruciating feeling? Is this what_ want _is all about?_

Tamsin used to scoff at all that poetry and song she's seen, etched into jars and kept away in brittle parchments, all these people trying to put all this _pain_ into words, and yet at that moment, it all comes to her more clearly. _Nobody writes songs about the ones that come easy._

Bo keeps looking. _Is this what heartbreak is? No wonder people die of it all the time._ Bo steps in closer. She's got that _look_ on her again, and Tamsin knows that she's thinking it's a _now or never_ thing.

But Tamsin knows better. It's never _now or never_. "We have to go," she says, pushing past Bo.

Bo tries not to let on that she's flustered. "Meet me at the Dal." 

Just like that, this round is over, and Tamsin has lost the girl. Again. "Later," she calls right back, though she doubts Bo has any idea just how long this _later_ may be.

It fills her with dread. It fills her with hope. #


End file.
